


Scars as Souvenirs

by Wandering_Anon



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Half-Elves, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, and his tiefling bf, homunculi are cute in 5e change my mind, mentions of serious injury, one specific half-elf actually, this is what happens when you have an intelligence of 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:34:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23548468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wandering_Anon/pseuds/Wandering_Anon
Summary: Fighting is all he knows.
Relationships: there are gays watch out y'all
Kudos: 2





	Scars as Souvenirs

Fighting is all he knows. 

From the first moments of his life he is fighting, struggling to counter the reign of a conqueror who killed his father and scorned his mother and oppressed anyone who dared have the opposite viewpoint. As a half-elf Heath is naturally imperfect, or so the roaring speeches and wandering guards tell him, so every day brings with it a reminder from his mother to conceal his ears and act as human as possible. Heath doesn't quite understand what's wrong with being a half-elf but he obeys anyway, and as he sees his kind exposed and dragged off to be stabbed behind alleyways he cannot help but think that it is _wrong,_ and that something must be done, but he is a child and these are adult matters and so he makes do with covering his ears and blending in.

Heath is five years old when he is thrown headfirst into a state-wide rebellion. He and his family are walking down the street when the mob tears through with change in their hearts and though his mother and his sister get away just fine, he stumbles and is swept away with the rest of the crowd. 

He cries for his family, but the cries are lost among the chants for blood and his throat goes hoarse from the effort, and even then he screams and wails in strained terror until one of the adults grasps him by the hand and guides him along in the march as though it’s exactly where he was supposed to be. She promises to get him back to his parents and Heath has no reason to disbelieve her, so he storms to the capital with the rest of the protestors. When things get nasty he is ordered to stand his ground and fight for as long as he can and because he does not know any better at the time, and he does not hesitate to pick up a dagger from one of the injured around him and do as much damage with the weapon as he can. When the blood is no longer shed and the civilian armada remains stronger, ready to throw their conqueror out of power, Heath is whisked onto one of the adults' shoulders and told that he did _good_ , that he was so _brave,_ that he was such a strong little child and they couldn't have done it without him. 

The praise is addicting.

The fighting was fun.

The half-elves are okay again.

He _has_ to do things like this more often.

For the next two years, fighting is a staple of Heath’s life. If he has a problem, more often than not he can solve it with his fists. He knows not to hurt his family, and he knows that it’s good to be kind to some people like the nice gardener lady across the street, but other than that he has no qualms kicking and scratching his way through life. He gains a bit of a reputation around the schoolground and people learn to stay away, but Heath has no care in the world about what they think of him. He is well at peace with his way of going through life.

When his sister is lost in a lake when he is seven his peace shatters and he learns that direct fighting isn't the solution to all of his problems. He cannot fight the water, nor can he make it spit his beloved sibling back up from its depths, and so he must deal with his emotions instead of chasing them away. He tries to ignore and deny the event at first, but then no body is ever found and everyone talks about the happening and most are assured that she is dead, so Heath gets frustrated and beats the shit out of the lifeguard to make himself feel better.

He later realises that if he wasn't a grieving minor, he would have gotten in serious trouble for that. So Heath stops fighting domestic civilians. 

But he does not stop _fighting_.

On the eve of his eighth birthday, Heath takes the combat to monsters. 

Anonymous reports of potential threats tell Heath that the fights he's looking for linger in the uninhabited forests at the town’s edge, so he begins to make nightly trips there. There is no guarantee exactly what he will run into if he darkens his face with charcoal and masks his scent with that of the wild and hunkers down in the underbrush, and he loves the suspense immediately. He is unarmed in the beginning, but his first encounter with a wolf tells him that he must parry nature's natural weapons with his own, so he begins carrying a blade around with him on his quests. 

He, accordingly, says nothing when his mother questions where her bread knife went. 

His exhaustion in the daytime begins to worry his mother, but she attributes it to the stress of losing his sister and Heath is grateful for this because he isn't sure how to explain what he's doing and isn't really sure he wants to. But a few months later his mother finds the bloodstained knife in his room and he is forced to tell of why it's there and as the words keep coming they feel less and less explicable and in the end he just threatens his mother with the knife when she dares to forbid Heath to keep doing what he does. 

His mother violently rips the knife from his hands and leaves.

Four days later, she walks him to a weapon training program. 

The dragonborn in charge asks no questions about Heath's age or motivation or legal right to carry a weapon. He doesn’t ask why Heath’s mother is allowing him to do this. The only questions he asks tie into Heath's experience and preferences, and after Heath answers them as honestly as possible, the dragonborn goes into a back room and comes back with two longswords. He gives one to Heath and keeps the other for himself and guides Heath into a separate room to show him what the weapon is about.

Heath is mesmerised by the dragonborn's finesse with the weapon; he moves like water about the arena but cuts with an icy precision. He knows from the moment he sees it that he _has_ to be able to imitate that skill one day, so when he is told to aim for the targets he tries his very best and even though his best is not very good, the dragonborn gives him praise in between evaluations and advice. It only takes about four months of practice for Heath to have a relatively good understanding of the weapon, and once he does, the dragonborn tosses him a set of leather armour and challenges him to a duel. 

The fight is beautiful and dangerous and thrilling in ways that Heath could never have imagined. With every strike of the swords the outside world seems to fade out until only Heath and the dragonborn are left and all that matters is the combat. It's a dizzying and addictive haze forged in determination and challenge, an intricate duet with clinks and clashes as the music, and even though their fight only lasts a few minutes it feels like it lasts for glorious hours. Even when Heath is knocked down and the dragonborn's longsword presses against his breastplate he is still intoxicated by the feeling, and when he is let free with a few words of advice and many more words of praise the only thought on his mind is that he _has_ to do that again someday. 

Heath begs his mother to buy the longsword and armour off of the dragonborn, and she agrees to it after a moment’s hesitation. Even through her smiles and her comments that she's proud Heath can see she's unnerved. She knows as well as he does that what he's doing is dangerous, but he knows far better than her the absolute _thrill_ of a fierce battle. He tells himself he isn’t guilty and makes himself believe it, and with many words of thanks to the dragonborn, his nightly trips into the woods resume. 

On his third trip Heath realises that now that he has a longsword and a lick of finesse in how to use it, there is no challenge in fighting the average creatures of the night anymore. He considers going back to using his old knife, but every time he thinks of the fight he had with the dragonborn he knows he can't because there is so much more fun to be had with this weapon if only he knows where to look. His town is filled with citizens trained in combat and looking for a fight, but there is only so much sparring they are willing to do with a child so he turns his attention back to the reports that led him to the forest in the first place. It is in a recommended encyclopaedia that he first begins to learn about the rare and fierce creatures of the country and decides on the spot that they’re exactly what he’s looking for. That very night, he uses his allowance to buy some tracking gear and walks deep into the woods with his head high.

At first, he is very bad at hunting strong animals. His tracking is sloppy; often the beasts run away or summon familiars before Heath can even get close. He doesn’t give up because he doesn’t think he can give up, and as time goes on he gets better and better at concealing his presence and manoeuvring through complex terrain. One day when he is twelve he successfully hunts down and kills a rust monster slumbering in the local junkyard, and he gets so ridiculously excited that the owner of the land wakes up and comes out to see what’s happening. To Heath’s amazement and joy the older elf is as excited about the dead beast as he is and rewards him with a few gold pieces for his work. Heath goes home grinning and shows the money and antennae to his mother, and in response she heralds him back to his room with a forced smile and a few words of reprimand.

Heath doesn’t understand why she’s upset about bringing home money. He’s heard her say they need the money, and there’s money to be had in what he’s doing. An idea begins to blossom in Heath’s head that if he could just roam the continent offering his services to those who need it, he would be able to buy the bare necessities and send the extra silver back to his mother so she could be happy. The idea promises combat without the need for nightfall and life without the drudgery of the town, so Heath makes the decision to pack his things and vanish into the woods that night. It doesn't take much effort since he owns very few material things and the only emotional tie he has is to his mother. He leaves a farewell note on his bed and promises to write home, and then leaves the village without ever looking back. 

He writes to his mother every time he reaches a town with a postal system, telling her that he is alive and that things are good and that he hasn't lost his spark yet, the hunts are still great. Often he sends her the extra money that he gets from working odd jobs or playing hired gun, but she never writes back and Heath isn't sure that he’d be in one place long enough to receive a letter anyway. He grows accustomed to life without her presence but he never forgets her and he never stops writing, even as the seasons change and time ticks by. 

When Heath is seventeen, something goes pleasantly awry on one of his hunts. He is tracking down a basilisk for sport in the rocky crags near a mountain town and about two thirds of the way through the creature’s cave he finds a tiny grey bundle shivering next to the remains of a shattered statue. Heath does not know what species it is, but he can quickly discern that it is small and harmless and _wounded_.

The creature does not glance up at Heath when he first approaches, but as he begins to gently stroke it between its wings like a beloved pet it turns its head to look at him, and the fear and innocence shining in its eyes is enough to convince Heath to help the creature out. The first doctor that he visits tells him that she does not do work on monsters and the upset look in the creature’s eyes leads Heath to create makeshift bandages out of his clothing and makeshift medication out of whatever he could buy or steal. After he nurses the small creature back to full health and does some research on what it is– a homunculus– he decides that it has no place out in the wild without a master and takes it with him when he leaves the town.

The homunculus, who is given the name Crescendo, has no problems with this whatsoever. 

Heath is twenty when he first loses a battle. He is fighting a gryphon out in the woods and even though he is running low on energy he keeps telling himself that he has to win, that he would slay this beast, and then he is falling and then he blacks out and then he wakes up in an infirmary.

Heath protests at first because the pain isn't that bad. He's gone through worse, and he is absolutely sure that Crescendo poisoned the gryphon and it’s going to die soon and he wants to go back and confirm the kill. The doctors then reveal the deep scratch of a talon torn horribly across his back, and the shredded remains of the muscle that once held taut there, and that he had been out for about a day and a half, and that the only reason he wasn't crying out in agony was a spell a mage had cast on him earlier. 

They tell him that he must stay there while they study the wound and try to help it heal over.

They tell him that his actions were stupid and reckless. 

And they tell him, after about a week of studying and healing later, that he will never fight again. 

But he rejects that notion and clings mightily to the fact that such a thing can't be, he has been fighting all of his life and nothing has ever stopped him and nothing was ever supposed to stop him and something as simple as a cut couldn't do something this drastic; this cut would do nothing, _nothing_ and there will be no effect and he'll walk out of it all just fine.

Just.

Fine. 

On the fifth day of Heath's dismissal from the hospital and the fifth day of drowning his sorrows in mead, a tiefling arrives and begins to flirt with him. Heath normally would have snapped and threatened the kid from the moment that he walked up, but his spirit is gone because he has just been told that his days on the battlefield are over and he does not know what he is if not for the battlefield. Yet as the tiefling continues on, Heath finds himself more and more tempted to deck the guy anyway and before he really knows what he's doing he asks the tiefling if he wants to fight. 

The tiefling says yes. 

Heath beckons the tiefling out of the bar and hopes that the panic in his eyes is concealed enough. For the first time in his combative life he is scared because there's no way this fight will end with his victory and perhaps it will worsen his– 

When the battle begins, they are evenly matched. 

They spar for a while and the tiefling is strong; he's parrying most of Heath's blows and working a few of his own in there too. The battle is fierce and brutal the likeness of which Heath has always adored and damn it, here he is, back out on the field even when the doctors said he would never be. His back _aches_ and he has to take special care not to strain it or try to bend in any way he is no longer able, but he can fight. He can still _work_ , and he can still _win_.

Perhaps it's the alcohol or perhaps it's how giddy he is that the doctors were wrong, but when the tiefling passes out Heath takes him to his current lodging and creates a small nest of blankets for him to sleep on and that's the start of that. 

His name is Fiero.

He's the first friend Heath has had in years. 

As the months of Heath’s healing pass and he finds himself in Fiero's company more and more, he starts to grow fond of the man in a way he never would have expected. He does not act on these feelings at first, mostly because he has no idea how to, but one night at a campground a certain set of... _actions…_ reveal that Fiero feels the same about him and so Heath wakes up the day after without regret and with a boyfriend. Having someone to fight with and care about is amazing for a while but once Heath recovers enough to continue with his nomadic way of life he finds himself hesitating. He isn’t cut out for staying in one place for too long but now that he has someone to care about he has an incentive not to wander. He can’t stay, but he _wants_ to stay. 

When he explains this plight to Fiero, the tiefling simply laughs and offers to accompany him, and Heath leaps on the opportunity. But he quickly finds that bringing Fiero along is dangerous at best. The beasts out in the wild prove a lot more spontaneous and fierce than the ones in the outskirts of the town they’d met in, and though Fiero is strong, Heath finds himself worrying far too often for his sake. Heath knows how to manage out in the woods but he doesn’t know if Fiero has the same skill and he cannot see Fiero murdered out in the cold wilderness, so the next time they hit a town and camp out there, Heath sneaks out into the night to continue his wandering. He leaves Crescendo with Fiero as an unspoken vow that he _will_ meet with his boyfriend again one day, and after mauling three pieces of paper, he also manages to leave Fiero with a note. It's more apology than explanation but Heath is satisfied with it all the same, and he makes sure to pick up a map on his way out of the town so he can ensure that the address he tells Fiero to write to is the address of a town he will be visiting soon. 

Heath knows of the definite risk that Fiero will try to track him down using these addresses, but Heath also knows that he has more experience in making himself unseen than Fiero has in finding unseen objects and he doesn't think he can leave his boyfriend behind anyway. He hides in the underbellies of cities and takes work not from job boards but from citizens directly and for this his hunts become fewer and farther between and shadier too, but Heath doesn't care because he’s still getting the money he needs and keeping his boyfriend (who he sees in the crowds on occasion) safe in the process. He learns to thrive in the shadows and dark corners until one day Heath walks into a small town he’d told Fiero to write to and the tiefling is nowhere to be seen with not a note to be had. 

Heath tells himself that he is relieved at first. He is able to walk out from the shadows and net a few easy jobs. But the gnawing sense of fear chews away at his heart until he finally receives a letter from Fiero about a week later, explaining that he’d fallen in with a group of fighters who offered to take him on an adventure and even though he wished Heath was there with him, the offer was intriguing enough and the reward grand enough for him to accept. 

For once, the address that Fiero tells him to write back to is a different address than the town Heath is currently in. 

It becomes a bit of a trend. It’s bittersweet.

Heath is barely twenty-three when his wandering brings him into a town fraught with terror, and he is eager at first because lands fraught with terror are usually lands plagued by demons. His suspicions are confirmed when he talks with a panicking citizen and is pointed towards a haunted mansion on a cliff, so he makes haste in sharpening his longsword and talking to the mayor in charge to secure his reward and dashing towards the decrepit building with weapon in hand. 

As the fates would have it, he arrives at the same time as an adventuring party who seems dead-set on taking down the mansion themselves, and Heath laughs at this at first because they’re such an unseemly and weak group. They know nothing of monsters and nothing of their weapons, and they don’t have a chance to win, but as he tells them this, one of them lifts a greataxe and roars a challenge and Heath sees that they are determined if nothing else.

The party holds the goliath back before he can lunge at Heath. Then with a smile, they invite Heath to join them, and he has no idea what to think of this proposition and especially no idea why his first instinct is to say yes.

But he does. 

In fact, even after they take down the vampire lord that had been occupying the castle and net the grand reward associated with it, Heath finds that he has no real desire to leave the group behind. 

He tears himself away from them anyway. He knows that he cannot bond with other people; while Heath is more than fine with indulging in the lovely risks of battle himself, letting others do the same will only lead to their injury and there is no way in hell that he is going to tolerate that. But when he tries to leave the town and return to his old ways he finds that something is stopping him from doing so. It’s the same damn feeling as Fiero all over again but with this ragtag adventuring group and he hates it. From the dark alleys of the town he watches them laze about in brothels and relax after the hunt, but as it turns out Heath is no longer the only one who knows how to travel without being seen and the halfling of the group finds him out very quickly.

Heath doesn’t know if the halfling knows his motivations or reasonings worth a damn, but he does know he can take the halfling in a fight if the need were ever to arise. Still, he feels no urge to fight the adventurer and that’s perplexing and enraging in a way he expresses no interest in thinking about. He settles for glaring the halfling down as they meet eyes through the window of a bar, but the halfling only smiles and beckons Heath to join them as though he has no cares in the world. Heath doesn’t at first, but the halfling keeps stealing glances at him and Heath still doesn’t understand his damn emotions, so eventually he makes the choice to drop in and greet the others. The halfling buys him an ale and mere minutes later, Heath is introducing himself to the group. He gets their names in turn: the halfling Wodas, the goliath Gary, the human Aventurine.

Mere days later, Heath leaves town as a formal member of the self-proclaimed Wandering Guard. 

When he writes about this to Fiero in his longest letter to-date the tiefling reply is surprisingly jovial and teasing with an undertone of support. Heath’s boyfriend is all for the idea and wishes Heath the best, offering advice and telling the best stories of his since-disbanded party. In the back of his mind, Heath notices that the addresses are getting closer and closer to his again, but there’s really nothing he can do about it now that he’s in a group so he just accepts the fact and readies himself for the reprimands that he knows will come. He doesn’t inform the group, even after they notice his tension; he sees no reason to. 

The Wandering Guard only winds up travelling through three towns before Fiero shows up again to bid Heath a hello. Through the anger and scolding it is very, _very_ clear that the tiefling is relieved to see him, and Heath would be lying to say he didn't feel the same about seeing his boyfriend and homunculus– both stronger from their adventures– again. He apologises profusely for leaving Fiero behind and does not hesitate for a second to ask his group if they would allow him to bring Fiero along. It only takes one look at the tiefling and another at Heath’s determined scowl for them to agree, and Fiero is officially introduced into the guard that afternoon. 

He and Heath spend that night as reunited lovers are wont to. 

When they set back out onto the road Heath fully expects to feel that same pang of worry for Fiero that drove him to leave the first time. He doesn't. And, for the first time, he understands why. He has allies, now, to ensure that if Heath cannot keep Fiero alive, there’s someone else who will. He has friends, now, who he knows will have _his_ back too. 

Fighting, still, is all he knows. But he no longer only knows how to fight alone.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not usually one to post OC-centric fits, but I'm actually super proud of how this one turned out. I hope you enjoyed the read!


End file.
